Columnists
We can’t see the wood for the trees
I was relieved to discover, earlier this week, that the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, was a symbol of…
Why has coronavirus fled London?
My partner, Julian, hovered at my shoulder on Friday as I tapped out my Times Saturday column (about travel quarantine).…
It’s not only Cummings whose fate is at stake
When the cabinet met by conference call on Monday, three ministers spoke in support of Dominic Cummings: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella…
If ‘whatever it takes’ means state share stakes in industry, so be it
Should the government be prepared to take equity stakes in major companies that will struggle to survive the current crisis?…
The Spectator’s notes
At Dominic Cummings’s press conference on Monday, reporters tried two lines of attack. One was to behave like local detectives,…
The healing power of kindness
Nobody earns the right to respect just by having lived into old age, whenever that begins — it has happened…
Is living without risk really living at all?
Taking my life in my hands — as we all do when getting out of bed — I walked along…
Twitter spreads riot porn — but censors a President vowing to restore law and order
If you have been following the Minneapolis riots on Twitter or Facebook, you may have come across an edgy new…
X number of days to save the economy!
I wonder what the Labour party will use as its scare slogan at the next election? After all, the usual…
Why schools should stay shut
Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti?…
This is Royal Mail’s chance to appoint a boss fit for the new age
The Royal Mail worker who rang my bell to deliver an Amazon package on Friday was wearing a glittery ball…
Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?
I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when…
The Spectator’s Notes
Last month, writing elsewhere, I quoted the website of the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge: ‘Under the leadership of…
The dream is over
It started when, the day after the announcement of some lockdown easing, I drove five miles along the coast road.…
Boycotting China is not that easy
China’s various human rights abuses, their treatment of women, their savagery toward religious people and their chokehold on Taiwan and…
The birth of a new telecoms giant heralds the end of Branson’s empire
This month’s most significant corporate deal attracted less attention than it might have done in normal times, crowded out by…
The Spectator’s Notes
A friend, a senior retired mandarin, emails. He complains that rural lockdown means that he and his wife have ‘got…
Who can still make a Sunday joint last a week?
Sunday lunch was always roast beef and, in the traditional way, the Yorkshire pudding was served first with gravy, supposedly…
This is not a natural disaster
Should our future permit an occupation so frivolous, historians years from now will make a big mistake if they blame…
In defence of the lockdown
I realised things were getting back to normal when I threw away a third of a tin of chopped tomatoes…
The British state needs rewiring
‘Covid-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s,’ declares the government’s command paper on the…
You’re not special – just ask Google
My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…
For now, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
It’s not us, China – it’s you
Like nearly everything named a ‘scandal’, ‘affair’ or given the post-fix ‘gate’, almost nobody now remembers the Dalai Lama affair.…
Don’t throw money at airlines now: wait for creative destruction ahead
British Airways warns of 12,000 redundancies. Ryanair announces 3,000 job losses as ‘a minimum to survive the next 12 months’;…
